El Capitan. no packages were eligible for install.

How do you set the date on the machine when there is no operating system installed? Would you be able to share those instructions or a link? Thanks

edit: sorry, found the other posts mentioning terminal commands

Thank God I’m not the only one. I have literally been going insane, as it seems this is the only version of OS X that I cannot get installed. I can install anything from mountain lion up to Mojave, yet it will not do El Capitan. I believe the instructions that you think the person for sound valid and I’m gonna try that right now and pray it works

Thank you so much! Why is this the only version of OS X that causes this problem? I have been able to install everything from mountain lion up to Mojave and in between except for El Capitan. I kept getting that same exact error message no matter how I tried to do it. Even when I tried hooking up an extra hard drive to a different computer. I literally thought I had lost my mind. Thank you for this. I’m trying it right now and will let you know if it works. Is it necessary to disable SIP before hand? For some reason even though I did not successfully install El Capitan, it did create an El Capitan recovery partition. I have already disabled sip just in case. I don’t think it should matter that it’s disabled. If anything I think it should help but at this point I don’t know…

Would it matter if I already have another partition with a different version of OS X on it? If so, I can start with a fresh drive and just do the El Capitan install first, and then worry about partitioning for the other version later

Thank you jmaiers! I was able to reinstall El Capitan on my circa 2008 17” MacBook Pro (model A1261) by following the steps you outlined. I ran into exactly the same issue Charlee78 did. Forcing the magic date and preventing WiFi from setting it back apparently did the trick.

All above worked for me today, except I needed to leave wifi and ethernet disconnected once removed otherwise it failed every time.

NOTE: I had to try and connect to a different wifi router to stop it automatically reconnecting (my son was on his computer upstairs so I couldn't turn the router off). You could of course go into router settings and block the device as well if needed.

I can't believe this actually worked! I had to take my wifi offline though. It must have used it to reset the time too early after boot.

I turned it back on when it was asking to setup wifi later in the install process. It didn't appear in the list but connecting to it manually (as "Other") worked.

I just resucited my mid 2012 power house macbook pro and I could fix it all perfectly thanks for this golden tip. Best thing to do is: once you change the date on the terminal, disconnect your router. Then restart and it will work, you can connect router later once it's installed. Thanks!

This is it!! This is the one! I searched for a while, in multiple places, to solve this issue with my old Mac. I erased the hard drive but wasn't able to install El Capitan until I read this VERY helpful comment! Thank you so much, jmaiers!

Works as advertised!! I just revived a mid-2010 Mac Pro Craigslist giveaway using this routine... was going to sell it for parts on

eBay but I think I'm going to keep it for a while now! (Follow the directions to the letter. it takes some time but you won't be

disappointed!)

Charleen78. Thank you for sharing. First I am working on an iMac 2014. However, I tried the steps you offered but it is still not working for me. I might just be doing something incorrectly or maybe I need to not use EL Capitan. I changed the date from Tue Nov 30 11:59 to what you offered but still no luck. Please, if there is anyone who is willing to help I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks everyone!

As many have stated here before, you need to disconnect your machine from the internet before you begin the routine.

Wi-fi off, ethernet cable disconnected, you're ready to go. I've upgraded 3 Mac Pros this way and they're all running like new.

Good luck to you!

Thanks all for the very informative and helpful messages.

It was a challenging but ultimately fun and interesting experience bringing a mid-2009 Macbook Pro back from the dead.

For others who may be confronting the same issue, here is the syntax that I used in Terminal to change the date:

date -u 0929121211

Charlee78 - Thank you!! Your instructions were the only thing that worked and I tried so many different ways suggested from many, many internet searches. I was about to give up & trash my old MacBook Pro 15 inch Late 2008. I had the same problem - "Os x could not be installed on you computer. No packages were eligible for install." Hats off to Level 1 Charlee78!!

Thanks for your help jmaiers, a lifesaver ! I had to do it a few times , being a Terminal rookie I literally only put the date not realising that it had to be followed by exit and return for the date to change. Finally I quit the set up assistant using command-q before shutting down which is useful for the new owner.